Having electrical display elements associated with an electronic circuit and connected with a minimum number of external components to provide a high degree of different display conditions is valuable.
This invention relates to display elements for association with an electronic circuit. In particular, it relates to external display elements for association with a chip so that multiple electrical conditions as existent or indicated by the chip can be displayed with a minimum number of display elements. The invention is directed to yielding a high degree of information from each display.
The invention is directed more particularly to driving the display elements, which are preferably LEDs, without the need for external latches, decoders or buffers.
Prior known systems do not have a means for directly driving a display. Accordingly, the known techniques are relatively complex in decoding information from a device for display by a display element.
In one known prior art system, an IMR+ chip (Trademark of AMD) obtains status information from the device by stripping off a serial bit stream. This is decoded and latched to a display device.
In two other known chips, namely the MPR II and SHC chips (Trademarks of AT&T), the user is provided with seven data lines that encode 96 states. This requires the user to use external logic to decode the information on the lines. A state machine diagram is necessary to extract this information onto a visual display.
Other known devices, namely RIC and LERIC chips (Trademarks of NSC), provide a user with eight data lines that encode 60 states. The user needs to apply external logic to decode and latch this information.
All of these devices are unduly complex in their systems and circuitry for obtaining information from the display devices.